The Ordeal
by DirigibleBoyKing
Summary: The one where Demon Dean tortures Sam and regrets it. That's pretty much it. Referenced Sam/Dean, and includes mentions of Cage trauma.


It's over from the second Sam lowers the knife.

Dean moves in, the hammer still in his hand, and slams his brother into the tiled wall face-first. He'd been going to do this the easy way, with a single blow and the cave of bone beneath his fingers, but hell, if Sam wants to mess around? Dean's pretty much up for anything.

'Dean,' says Sam into the wall. His voice is carefully steady. 'I know you're in there. I know you can hear me.'

Dean leans in, practically resting his chin on Sam's shoulder. 'Damn right I'm in here. Have fun getting me to rescue you in the nick of time.'

Sam turns his face away. Dean gets his hand securely round both of Sam's wrists- not that little brother's going anywhere either way- and brings the hammer slowly up, grazing the white nape of Sam's neck, tracing the vulnerable hollow behind his ear, right up to his cheekbone, which he taps against, gently, testing, and the hitch in Sam's breathing is barely noticeable.

Oh, this is fun.

Dean holds that position for a few seconds. They're so close he can almost hear the rasp of his breath over Sam's skin. Then all at once he draws back the hammer and gives a precisely calculated single knock to his brother's temple, using the blunt end. Sam's head snaps to the side and his whole body buckles, slumping back into Dean's arms.

Dean's new strength makes Sam feel weightless as he carries him down to the dungeon, and hell, that feels good. His little brother really is the weaker one, overpowered, so easy to gather up and fold into his chest. His legs still stick out, though. Dean can't help swerving so they don't bash into the doorframes- it's a reflex. But he dumps Sam into the chair in the dungeon cheerfully, and straps him down.

Once he's got everything he needs, he leans back against the wall and waits.

Sam begins by trying to move his gangly legs. When he realises he can't, he jolts awake like he's been electrocuted, trembling and pulling at the leather straps round his wrists and ankles. It's actually pretty cute.

When Dean steps forward is when Sam stiffens up and closes his eyes briefly.

'You know,' says Dean, 'no offence, little brother, but you look like shit.'

'Dean,' says Sam.

Dean's grinning. It's been such a long time since he really had fun with the kid. 'Yeah, kiddo?'

His brother's flinch is minute. 'Can we please just get on with the whole torture deal, okay? Seriously. I can take anything but monologuing.'

'Really, huh?' Dean picks something up from the table, allowing it to glint in the anaemic light. It's a delicate silver instrument. The last time Dean saw one like it was in Hell, actually. 'Are you sure about that, Sam?'

Sam can't take his eyes off the instrument Dean's holding. When he finally does, though, his voice is brittle as thin glass.

He clears his throat. 'Pretty damn sure.'

'See,' says Dean, poking around on the tray (are those _thumbscrews_?), 'I think you're lying.' And he advances, close enough to see Sam's adam's apple work delicately, convulsively, in his throat, and Dean gets a sudden violent urge to touch it.

But his younger brother's eyes are wide and gleaming with fear.

'Oh, I've heard the stories, Sam,' Dean says. 'What Lucifer did. What Michael did,' and he can actually see the shutters go down behind Sam's eyes. Jeez, Sam and his panic modes. But Dean leans closer and closer with every word. 'Flaying. Burning. Carving. They pulled you to little bloody threads. Raping. You're hell's bitch since birth, Sam. They fucking _own_ you.'

Their noses are almost touching, but Sam's eyes are closed.

'Hey, if you're going to keep that up,' he says, 'I _can_ cut your eyelids off.'

Sam's eyes flick open. It takes him a while to be able to speak, though. Probably just in shock or something. That happens, right?

'You're right, of course.' It doesn't look like it's a struggle to admit, that's the annoying part. Sam looks up at Dean as he says it, open and noncommital. 'Everything you said. More. It was hundreds of years, Dean. I really don't know what makes you think this is anything new.' Sam actually laughs. 'Hell, it isn't like they never wore you while they were turning me inside out, right?'

Dean's chest does something weird then. He takes a second to realise that it had constricted; he'd known, intellectually, about the archangels turning into him in the Cage, but it's different when Sam says it. Says it like it doesn't even _matter_.

But he figures it was just some sort of a crossed signal up in his brain somewhere, the bit of it that still looks at Sam and thinks _little brother._ He shakes it off and goes to stand behind Sam, undoing the buckles on his sling. Sam sits rigid as he pulls it off, but when Dean takes out a knife and starts to cut away his shirt (and he's careful, so careful not to graze Sammy, because that can wait) his pale skin quivers under Dean's blunt fingers.

When Sam is shirtless, half-naked, shivering- god, his ribs are visible, has the dude not been eating?- Dean crouches in front of him with the pliers in his hand and just grins for a minute. The mute terror he sees fills him up with something hot and nasty-nice. The knowledge hangs between them- all the times he's gently stitched Sam's torn skin together, brisk and comforting.

Dean knows all his weak spots. Every single one.

It's not really playing fair, but he goes for the fingernails first. 'D-dean?' Sam says, panic in his eyes, and he tries to curl his fingers into themselves, but Dean just flattens them out against the chair arm and goes to town, pulling slowly and steadily, and Sam tips his head back one moment and hunches down into himself the next and fucking _screams_.

Six fingernails in and there are tears trailing down his brother's cheeks and Sam's pretty much hyperventilating and it turns out that gets old pretty damn fast. So Dean ruffles his hair and pats him on the cheek, and whaddaya know, Sam actually leans into the contact for a moment. It's as long as it takes for Dean to bend down and wrench Sam's shoulder out of place with a sickening crunch.

Sam actually retches with the pain, bringing up a strand of bloody spittle, and Dean frowns. Sam shouldn't be internally bleeding yet. Maybe it's a leftover injury from that Cole dude. It doesn't really make much difference, though, and he's about to get to work with the hammer when Sam's voice, a cracked wheeze, cuts him off.

'Stop,' he's saying. 'Dean. Stop. I- I can't-'

Dean crouches down in front of him. 'Can't what, Sammy?'

Tears are still drying on Sam's skin. He's shaking uncontrollably. When Dean dislocates the other shoulder, he bites clean through his bottom lip.

So Dean sits back and takes a break for a second, watching his brother's little hiccupy breaths as he tries to regain control of himself. And finally, because it's Sam, he does, and then he looks up at Dean.

'There's nothing you can do,' he says plainly.

Dean puts his hand behind his ear. 'Sorry, Sammy?'

Sam makes a pitiful attempt to push himself up in the seat. Then he looks up at Dean, and the tenderness in his eyes makes rage pool hot and thick in Dean's stomach, because Sam has no _right_ to still love him.

'You're never going to make me hate you,' he says. 'Never. I can't. I can't.'

He raises his head, turning sad eyes on Dean. It's like he's _asking_ to get punched, so Dean punches him. Then, just for the hell of it, he punches him again, and again, and again, until Sam's nose is bleeding. Mouth, too, and his face looks pretty bashed up, because Dean was still wearing his rings, but what the heck, live a little.

Sam is, amazingly, still conscious. He looks like he tries to say something, but chokes up blood instead, shining bright red on his lips. So Dean hits him again, and _then_ he gets out the hammer and, would you look at that, Sammy screams his throat raw when Dean shatters both his knees. But it's just... not doing it for him. The satisfaction forms and trickles away.

The whole thing is, frankly, wearing out when Sam finally passes out (after Dean breaks his elbows, too). He breaks a couple fingers just for kicks- Sam's long, delicate, slender fingers, and it feels pretty good when they snap in his hands like spaghetti. Still, though- he needs to feel that gut-deep satisfaction. Maybe he should start chopping bits off? But something in him baulks at that. He's not sure why. Probably because it feels better whaling on a Sam who is, you know, still recognisably Sam.

His hands feel light without the hammer in them as he steps back and surveys his little brother, waiting for the surge of satisfaction, of inspiration (he could still get Sam on the floor and fuck him raw- God, when was the last time they fucked, the night before he died? When he pinned Sam to the mattress and fucked him halfway through and he arched his neck and _begged_ for it). He could peel all his skin off, brand his name all over his exposed chest-

He envisions it, wondering what would feel best beneath his hands, but for some reason he doesn't see a canvas, this time, an as-yet-unfinished work of art. He blinks, but still- all he sees is Sam with his head hanging forward, blood dripping down from his mouth to spatter his too-white skin, his damaged fingers closed protectively into his palms.

Sam coughs. The sound is tiny and weak, like the piping of a baby bird.

And that's when it hits Dean like a freight train that he loves Sam so much he feels like he could die from it and that the twisted, broken creature beneath him must live or he'll leave Dean unfinished forever.

He comes back to himself with a shivering shock, as if blown back into his body by a strong wind, and his skin prickles for a moment. He stands staring dumbly at Sam. The sight- he can't process it.

Oh, god, Sam's so messed up and he _doesn't know what to do first_ and that is terrifying.

After a few silent seconds, he steps forward and gingerly starts to undo the straps. Sam doesn't stir. When he tries to lift him it must jar all his broken bones and Sam lets out an awful _awful_ sound but there really isn't much else he can do, so he just cradles his too-light brother in his arms and carries him upstairs. Sam wakes up when Dean nearly trips, jostling them, and he tries to scream and it fucking kills Dean to hear.

He gets Sam to the stupid memory-foam mattress and lies him down and sweat is starting out on Sam's skin and looking at him Dean just gets overwhelmed by the amount of injuries and he's thinking _Cas Cas Cas come the fuck down here already and_ fix _him_ and then Sam moans in agony and Dean realises his own face is wet with tears and his knuckles have Sammy's blood on them, oh _god_ , and he just has no idea where to start with this.

Painkillers. Painkillers will do.

But he's only halfway down the corridor when there's a sound like the rushing of wings, and he turns round to see Cas.

'I assume you're cured,' Cas says, but Dean's already running back into the room where Sam is and saying 'Fix him, Cas, you have to, you have to,' and then Cas follows him in and he hears the angel's sharp intake of breath.

Cas steps right up to the bed, tracing his hands over Sam's body without touching. Then he looks at Dean.

Dean can only nod.

'Dean,' says Castiel. 'You did this?'

'Just fix him,' he says, or maybe bawls, it gets a little fuzzy.

Cas takes care of the worst of the damage. Sam's knees and elbows are healed, and his fingers unbroken, though Cas doesn't grow the nails back. Then he stumbles a little, grey-faced, and says without looking at Dean 'I healed the internal bleeding,' and Dean really just has _had_ it.

But then there's a quiet, choked sound from the bed, and Dean's propping Sam up and holding a glass of water to his lips, and Sam splutters a little but he's really too weak to object and Dean gets a good bit of it down him.

Cas looks like shit, too, now he's expended so much power, but Dean can't worry about that. He sends him off for plasters, bandages, the works, and stays with Sam, who's still only half-conscious, tears constantly welling up in his eyes and spilling over. He has some kind of full-body spasm when Dean puts his arm around him, and though he loosens up when Dean starts talking to him, quiet and desperate, telling him it's okay, it's gonna be okay, Dean suspects it's more physical weakness than trust.

When Cas gets back Dean's expecting a long and painful ordeal of dousing Sam's raw nail-beds in alcohol, but Cas dully explains that he cleaned the wounds when he healed Sam. 'It was the least I could do, Dean,' he says, when Dean can't thank him enough. Then he actually takes a bandage and starts wrapping Sam's skinned wrist where the strap chafed. His hands are gentle without timidity.

Dean's aren't. They shake as he puts plasters on Sam's fingers, as carefully as he can. He tries to use butterfly bandages for the cuts on Sam's face, but his hands are too unsteady, and Cas has to take over. His fingers look all wrong against Sam's skin.

Then, of course, Dean's brain chooses to remind him that he considered _raping_ Sam, and he gets to the bathroom just in time to quietly throw up.

Cas does the work after that. Cas is the one who sits in Dean's room and watches Sam twitch and shiver in the grip of a nightmare, not knowing how to soothe him by stroking his face or kissing his forehead, while Dean stands in the doorway, ready to duck out of sight if Sam wakes up.

It doesn't occur to him that, technically, he's still a demon til about an hour later. When it does, he finds the syringes of blood and he injects himself, shot after shot, every hour, on the hour.

It's only when the last of the haze has cleared that he stands in the middle of the room, his knuckles still smeared with Sam's blood, and- God help him- he prays.


End file.
